Two is the Loneliest Number
by lookslikeajobforthewinchesters
Summary: Kellar is back for Neal, but he uses El as a bargaining chip. When Peter makes a decision fueled by anger, the truth comes out. Four years go by before the flames of Peter's decision finally flicker out. Rated M for mention of human trafficking, a three-party relationship, and death.


Peter would never admit it to anyone, not even to El, but the look on Neal's face that day made him die a little inside.

It was Keller – _again_ – and he'd come to exact revenge on Peter and Neal for sending him to rot in jail…again. His breakout wasn't high-tech, so Peter knew he didn't plan on being out for long. He'd skipped out in the laundry bin during a shift change. Guards were set to do a headcount ten minutes after he slipped out, so he wouldn't have gotten much of a head start. Nothing about this escape even whispered 'getaway'. It practically screamed 'buy me some time'. Keller hadn't been planning to run; he'd been planning to meet with Peter.

So when Peter got the same call from Diana that he'd received three years ago, that El had been taken and Keller had escaped jail, he wasn't surprised. He was horrified, but he'd been expecting it at some point. Only this time, he knew what Keller really wanted.

Neal had followed him on his crazed chase around New York, pasty white with fear and trembling with rage. Peter knew Neal loved El, too. They'd been together for two years now, the three of them. El and Peter and their third, Neal. It worked most of the time. They took turns sleeping in the middle and making breakfast. Peter and Neal alternated making love to El and alternated who topped when they were together. There was only one rule: Neal was never with one of them alone. Peter wasn't sure if this was a conscious decision or not, but Neal never once came on to one of them without the other present.

Right now, Neal looked just as scared as Peter was and it took all of Peter's strength not to scream at him that he had no right to be. Neal was a third, for Christ's sake! He didn't get to play the scared husband! It was his fault they were in this mess, anyways!

Keller had told him so over the phone before Peter dragged Neal into the Taurus and set off across town under the guise of finding El at a location Keller had set up.

When they reached the warehouse and drove the car down a narrow alley between it and a drycleaners, Peter stopped the car and looked at Neal. The expression of pure terror on his partner's face flipped the guilty switch in his gut for a split second, but he pressed it down firmly. He swallowed and prepared to deliver the news.

"Keller doesn't want El," he told Neal. He let that sit for a few minutes before stepping out of the car and heading toward the empty lot behind the warehouse. The sound of a car door closing gently informed him that Neal was going to follow. He texted the number Keller had called him from and waited, arms crossed and face serious, with Neal standing beside him. One look told him that Neal's forehead was covered in a nervous sweat and his eyes were bloodshot from unshed tears.

Keller exited the warehouse with El, a gun pressed to her head and a sadistic grin on his face.

Neal let out a sound of dismay. When El caught site of both her boys standing there waiting for her, she cried out with relief.

"Peter, Neal," she almost laughed with joy. Peter said nothing, but looked to Neal in the same way he'd looked at him back when Neal had uprooted his life and dragged him across the globe on a wild goose chase. It was a look that said 'here's your chance to make up for everything'.

El didn't notice the look, but Neal did. In a few short seconds, the look on his face went from fear for El to confusion to realization to acceptance. The wheels in Neal's head turned and he came to the conclusion: this wasn't a rescue, it was a trade. And he was okay with that.

That was the look that killed Peter. There was no surprise in his face, nothing to indicate that he never thought Peter would trade his life for El's. He took it in stride and smoothed sweaty palms over his wrinkled wool pants. It didn't escape Peter that this was the same ratpack suit Neal had worn on their first day together on the job, back when the anklet had forced his association to Peter. Back when it hadn't forced them to keep their relationship quiet, but rather broadcast it. It had been a different relationship then.

Neal made a movement like he was about to reach for Peter's hand – to shake it or hold it one last time, Peter didn't know – but Neal redirected it to straighten his hat instead. Neal looked away – out over the water to the outline of his supermax prison – before turning back to Peter.

"We had a good run," he said, hands in the pockets of his trousers. "Keep her safe."

Peter almost – almost – regretted his decision. He had a moment of panic in which he thought about how he hadn't even given the FBI a chance to find El. He'd gone after her himself. Maybe if he'd asked them first, this wouldn't be happening…but then he looked at El with a gun to her temple and that train of thought died. If he had to choose one, it would always be El.

Neal was just a third. There had been others before and there would be others after.

There would never be another El.

Keller released El and Neal started walking towards them and she stumbled towards their lover with relief written all over her face. Keller's gun remained trained on her, his eyes boring into Neal's face as if to say 'try anything and she's dead'. Neal seemed to understand.

When El reached him, she collapsed into his arms and buried her face in his neck as she sobbed. She had swung Neal around with the force of her lunge and her back was now to Peter. Neal's eyes closed and the acceptance left his face for a split second as grief took over. He held El in his arms and breathed in her hair before stepping back almost too quickly.

El looked confused, but she pressed her lips against Neal's desperately, trying to understand why he didn't cling to her like she did to him. But Neal pulled away and looked at his shoes.

"Go to Peter," Neal said just loud enough for Peter and Keller to hear. El's confusion increased as she looked between Peter, Keller, and Neal for an answer. Neal gave her a little push in Peter's direction, but she didn't move. "God, El, go _now_."

"I don't…" El's voice trailed off as she stared at Peter's stone face and crossed arms. She'd known her husband for fourteen years and that look had never bided well for anyone. She looked back at Neal's face, filled with love and a touch of embarrassment. Her face lit up for shock and horror. "Neal?"

He finally met her eyes. Peter watched as he struggled for a moment to contain himself – nothing anyone else would know, but the world's leading expert of Neal Caffrey caught it in a second. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared El in the face. Then, without warning, he grabbed her head and kissed her like he'd never see her again.

Peter knew he wouldn't.

"Neal, no," El cried when he pulled away. Neal walked toward Keller, hands back in his pockets and back straight. Peter grabbed El before she could lunge at Neal and drag him back. "No! Neal, _no_!"

Neal reached Keller's side and they stood together seemingly peacefully, but Peter knew better. He knew that Keller had a gun to Neal's back and that Neal wasn't going to make it an inch without getting a bullet in his spine. El screamed and clawed at him, eyes trained on Neal.

"You know I'm going to kill him, right?" Keller asked with amusement. "You know you just trade his life for your wife's?"

Peter said nothing, but he couldn't force his eyes away from Neal's deep blue ones. Those same eyes he'd seen outside the bank where Neal had posed as a concerned citizen after his first bond forgery, the same eyes he'd seen disappear into the crowd after he'd lifted a Caravaggio during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the same eyes he'd watched sink over the edge of a bridge in Venice when Neal dove into a passing water taxi with six million dollars' worth of Italian crown jewels in his pocket.

The same blue eyes that had stared into his less than twelve hours ago as his lips whispered 'I love you' for the very first time.

Things change quickly.

Peter dragged El away from the warehouse, ignoring he struggles and tearing his eyes away from Neal's. This chapter of their life was over now. They had to get away before Keller changed his mind and came back for El.

The minute he reached the car, he buckled El into her seat and started to drive. She continued to sob, but Peter dialed the phone anyways and spoke to Diana loudly over his wife's cries. He told her where they could find Keller and that he probably had Neal with him. That he'd given up holding El to take Neal hostage instead. Then he drove El to the hospital and made her submit to every test the doctors wanted to run, despite the fact that she was inconsolable with grief.

"No, Neal, no," she cried over and over. Peter said nothing, but stroked her hair and tried not to remember the look on Neal's face when he realized he was a bargaining piece.

Two hours later, El was sedated to alleviate her hysteria and Diana showed up at the hospital covered in blood and a horror-stricken look on her face. She took one look at an unconscious El, a long look at a stoic Peter, and shook her head once.

"Caffrey's dead."

She turned on her heel and marched out the door.

WCWCWCWC

It had been four years since Peter had traded Neal for El in that warehouse parking lot. Not a night went by without Peter seeing that look on Neal's face and waking up in a cold sweat. Not a night went by that El didn't cry herself to sleep silently. The days passed as usual. Peter went to the White Collar unit, after a brief stint in Evidence Management during an OPR investigation into Neal Caffrey's death. El continued Burke Premiere Events, but closed down her San Francisco branch indefinitely. She didn't like to be away from Peter overnight anymore.

El knew exactly what had gone down that day on at the warehouse and she only stayed with Peter to remind him every day what Neal had meant to them. She brought it up subtly, like casually mentioning how Neal's insight would be helpful on a particularly difficult case or reminiscing about the time Neal had remembered El and Peter's anniversary when even they didn't and set up a luxurious getaway in the Hamptons at a friend's house for the weekend.

She never missed an opportunity to remind Peter that what he had done had broken her heart. She never forgot to remind him of Neal's birthday or their anniversary as a threesome. She refused to celebrate their wedding anniversary, saying that it was no longer important because they were no longer just a couple. She didn't celebrate occasions unless it was clear that Neal was supposed to be there, too.

So when the doorbell rang on El and Peter's nineteenth wedding anniversary, she assumed it was Hughes showing up for their monthly White Collar barbeque. When she opened it and found Neal Caffrey standing there with a bottle of Port, she dropped the beer she had grabbed for Peter and didn't even notice when it smashed all over the hardwoods. The smile slipped from Neal's face when she said nothing, but stared at him blankly.

"El?" he asked unsurely, like he was reconsidering his decision to show up. She threw her arms around him and clung to him like a life raft. He was real. He was _real_, damn it, and she was holding his body right now.

"El, what's going on?" Peter's voice carried through their long, narrow house and he reached them a second later. He froze when he spotted Neal hugging his wife with a bottle of red wine slipping from his fingers. Peter grabbed it before it could become part of the beer and glass mess on the floor and set it on the hallway table. "Neal? Oh, God."

"Peter, hi," Neal said tentatively. He looked around, taking in the paper plates and empty beer bottles littering the various surfaces of their house. He hesitated. "Is this a bad time?"

"A bad –? There is no bad time for you to come back to us," El said fiercely. Her eyes were filled with tears. "Neal, you're alive. I thought you were dead…Diana told us…"

"I asked her to," Neal looked away, ashamed. "I thought it was better that way. It wasn't a lie – I did die for a while, but they brought me back in the ambulance."

"In the ambulance?"

"Keller took it upon himself to make sure I was good and dead before he left the warehouse. Luckily, paramedics and the FBI team arrived pretty quickly," Neal explained. "When the brought me back, Diana was in the ambulance and she was about to call you. I asked her to tell you I had died. I thought it would be best if you didn't know. At least until I could take care of myself again. I didn't want you two stuck with that responsibility. El, I know you'd have dropped everything to nurse me back. I couldn't do that to you."

"Neal, what…?" El's face was horror-stricken. Neal plowed on, even though Peter stared him down blankly as he talked.

"So I spent four months at the hospital and three years at a rehab clinic in Germany. When they finally let me out, I wasn't sure where to go. I visited Moz at a location I am not a liberty to discuss with 'the suits' and when he finally convinced me it was time to come back, I boarded the first plane out of there."

"Why, Neal? Why would you think it was better for you to be dead?"

"I'm Neal Caffrey, El. You can't slip something by me, no matter how little you say about it. Keller was after the three of us. You, me or Peter. When he had you…it was clear to me that you were not the expendable one here. So when Peter took me to that warehouse and I realized he knew it, too, there was no way for me to con Keller into giving you back. So I did what I should have done the first time he took you."

"What, trade your life for mine? That's insane!"

"El," Neal looked embarrassed again. Peter shifted uncomfortably because Neal had done a lot of things worth being embarrassed about, but he had never shown it on his face. "It's not the first time I've been in that situation and it likely won't be the last."

El sank into to couch cushion and buried her face in her hands. She started to cry.

"That is so horrible," she sobbed. "How could…how could people trade you so easily?"

"I wasn't always the criminal," Neal said dryly. "For a while, in my teens, I was the victim."

Peter knew nothing about Neal's childhood. Everything he knew about Neal started at Neal's first heist in DC when he was nineteen years old. His ears perked up Neal mentioned his teen years.

"I was abducted when I was eight and learned an awful lot about human trafficking in a very short period of time. I got out when I was seventeen, but not before I had made my way around the globe a few times in a wooden crate. El, I'm not telling you this because I want you to feel sorry for me," he added gently when El sobbed harder. Peter's chest was constricting painfully and his mind was whispering 'you're no better than those traffickers'. "I'm telling you this because I'm not upset and I think you should know why. El, look at me. I'm grateful Peter traded me for you. I'm grateful my life alone was enough this time. You are worth so much more to this world…"

"God, Neal, I love you so much," El sobbed into her hands. He sat down beside her and rested a hand on her back calmly. "Don't you understand? The three of us were together on everything! I would never trade you for Peter or Peter for you! You don't do that to people you love!"

"El, it was no secret that there was an 'El and Peter' with me as an accessory," Neal comforted El. Peter stared him down. It was clear that Neal had thought exactly what Peter had forced himself to think when he rationalized selling Neal's life for the safety of his wife's. "I was your third and I was okay with that. Functional relationships have never worked well for me. Neal Caffrey is the kind of person who loves with all he has and takes what he can get in return. I've never quite found an equilibrium. With you and Peter, I could pretend like what you both felt for me could add up into something like what I felt. I was wrong, but it's not the first time."

"And it won't be the last," El finished for him sorrowfully. Neal nodded, face void of emotion.

"I came back to apologize for putting you both in that situation," he said quietly. "It's your anniversary and I wanted to make sure you both know I don't blame you. Diana contacted me to let me know that there was a lot of ill-placed rage floating around. I'm sorry."

Peter's anger dribbled over the brim of his tightly seal compartment where he kept all things Neal Caffrey. He slammed his fist down on the coffee table, making Neal jump.

"Don't be sorry, damn it!" he raged. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry I sold you like an animal to the slaughter and I'm sorry you think you were a third! We love you, we have always loved you! We are all thirds and we can't be a whole when one of us is dead! Damn it, Neal, I'm sorry I made you think you aren't worth it."

Neal sat in stunned silence, his hand stilled on El's shaking shoulders. He looked away, cheeks turning red.

"I can't go back to the way it was," he whispered. "I can't just forget everything happened and return to being Neal Caffrey, Burke Family Sex Toy."

"You were never that," Peter said wretchedly. "We loved you so much."

"Then how come you always celebrate your anniversary without me?" When he said it, he sounded like a teary child, humiliated by his own desire for love and comfort. Peter sank into the couch beside Neal and wrapped an arm around his shoulder.

"Because we never realized how much you meant to us. We should have been celebrating our anniversary together. We should never have left you alone while El and I went off on trips. We should have spent time alone with you. We should have made it known that we are three, not two," Peter admitted a little shamefully. "I should have apologized to you, too, when I neglected you and El for a baseball game. I should have made it up to both of you when I put myself in danger on a case and you both worried helplessly. I never really realized that it might be hurting you, too."

"Peter," Neal said hoarsely. "Can I come back?"

"Whenever you are ready."

"I'm not yet."

"That's okay," Peter told him, embedding his fingers in Neal's silky hair. He'd missed Neal's skin and hair and scent so much…it ached deep inside of him to sense it all again. "Just remember that El and I love you."

Peter and El both kissed Neal with a gentleness that couldn't begin to convey the emotions they felt. When they were done, they helped Neal up and guided him out into the backyard where he made his grand reappearance into to lives of the White Collar unit with a flip of his hat and a starry grin.

Nothing was okay. But maybe, just maybe, it would be someday.


End file.
